I’ve often been told that what makes Watchmen “unfilmable” is its complexity: this is surely not true. Generally this argument confuses complexity for detail, which nowadays is bread and butter to a sufficiently obsessive director a[…]

1. My contribution to Da Capo Best Music Writing 2008 (actually you can read this, since it’s one of my Pitchfork Poptimist columns from last year. But to maintain a figleaf of commercial appeal I am not saying which!).
2. My dozen contributio[…]

When Jeff Wayne was hunting for a musical way to express the horror and chaos of a Martian invasion, it was to Led Zeppelin he turned. The synthesiser riff on “Horsell Common And The Heat Ray”, so evocative of war-blasted Wokingham and Ch[…]

Live role-playing is a great idea. YES IT IS. All the stuff 95% of gamesmasters are really terrible at – verbal scene setting, establishing who is where when, getting across the physicality of the gameworld (and, indeed, the physics) – de[…]

i. Tooty Frooties are still being made!
ii. They are still completely horrible :([…]

Waylaid by some toddler-borne bacillus I’m not up to writing anything critical today so in lieu of content let’s have SOUNDS:

What have we here then? (more…)[…]

The signature of Russell T Davies’ tenure as Dr Who ‘showrunner’ has been a sustained examination of the dynamics and the dramatic possibilities of the Doctor/Companion relationship – from the obvious (what if they DO IT), to […]

According to Wikipedia, this is the formula for the evil god Darkseid’s Anti-Life Equation, currently menacing DC comics:

“loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding x guilt x sha[…]

Enjoy the top sounds of Europop 2008 – without spanking our bandwidth! FIPA’s technical committee has completed its report, and so the Poptimism Muxtape returns with the cream of the Europop tournament – two tracks from winners Swi[…]

The final sampled whistle has been blown and the record crowd is streaming out of the stadium digesting this extraordinary result: Switzerland have won Europop 2008. The game was an incident packed one, thanks in part to 15 extra Italian votes floodi[…]